A Jew at the Medici Court

A Jew at the Medici Court: The Letters of Benedetto BlanisHebreo(1615-1621)

EDWARD GOLDBERG
Series: Toronto Italian Studies
Copyright Date: 2011
Published by: University of Toronto Press
Pages: 448
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt2ttwfk
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  • Book Info
    A Jew at the Medici Court
    Book Description:

    Readers can now take a step closer and hear Blanis's compelling story in his own words; tracing his fraught relations with Jews and Christians, his desperate (and often illegal) business schemes, his disastrous strategies for advancement at the Medici Court, and his pursuit of arcane knowledge, including astrology, alchemy, and Kabbalah.

    eISBN: 978-1-4426-9801-7
    Subjects: History, Language & Literature

Table of Contents

  1. Front Matter
    (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    (pp. vii-viii)
  3. Introduction: The Blanis Letters
    (pp. ix-xviii)

    You are sitting in the vast Reading Room of the Florentine National Archive, one of those indeterminate spaces from the 1970s – office, factory, or parking garage? Generically functional desk lamps illumine row after row of sturdy formica-topped tables. On the smooth grey surface in front of you lie two massive volumes – square-edged, sharp-cornered, and stiffly bound.

    Each bright new sheet of acid-free paper holds a manuscript letter, fixed on a hinge like an oversized postage stamp. Some are long and some are short. Some are written with care and some in haste. Some are distinct and some are...

  4. A Note to Readers
    (pp. xix-xxii)
  5. The Blanis Letters, 1615–1621
    (pp. 3-314)
  6. Selected Bibliography
    (pp. 315-316)
  7. Index of Names
    (pp. 317-324)
  8. Index of Places
    (pp. 325-326)
  9. Index of Topics
    (pp. 327-328)